


Love Fucking Hurts

by vexedcer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Coda, Coda to 11.13 Love Hurts, Coming Out, Dean in Denial, Internalized Homophobia, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kinda, M/M, episode rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6991639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cas first walks through the plastic tarp, Dean swears his heart stops for a couple of seconds.</p><p>(Or, what if Cas was Dean's "deepest, darkest desire" in Love Hurts?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Fucking Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> yoooooo hi so this is basically me rewriting love hurts and replacing amara with cas and changing up the meaning the the last scene. I got the idea bc when i watched it all i could think was how similar it was to a coming out scene so i wrote it as such, kinda. 
> 
> Also Amara/The Darkness/Lucifer!Cas don't happen in this fic, i just kinda erased them bc im not a huge fan of the story, but other than that, nothing else really changes with the story. thanks for reading guys and feel free to tell me how awkward it is (i havent written in so long), and enjoy

When Cas first walks through the plastic tarp, Dean swears his heart stops for a couple of seconds. Cas should be in the bunker, binge watching season two of _House of Cards_ right now, like he said he was going to do when Dean called him earlier; not here in Ohio.

Then it clicks in his mind, _oh._

And as he’s trying his best not to step over the line into freaking the fuck out, Cas starts to speak.

“I understand, Dean,” Cas says. He steps further into the room, slowly on quiet feet.

“Is that right?” He responds, as the Angel continues his way into the room. His trench coat moves softly around his knees with the bend of his legs, almost soundless. The room is bordering on oppressively silent when neither of them are speaking, tension palpable.

“The longing in your heart? I feel it too,” Cas offers with a barely-there smile - if you could even call it that. It’s just an uptick of one corner of his mouth, almost sheepish in the face of the omission.

Dean glances towards the knife lodged in a board across the room, before darting his eyes back to Cas. His feet gently drift, lightly planting one foot and then the other in a bid to get closer to the knife. Cas, with an almost curious look on his face - already showing a five o’clock shadow - follows him, diverges direction to follow Dean’s lead.

“Well, that’s touching,” he mutters, his voice rough, “Considering that you don’t have a heart.” He steps again, as does Cas, his new mirror image. “ _Qareen_.”

“Who I am doesn’t matter,” Qareen responds, “The real question,” he says, pausing and breaking the paralleling movement they started, walking more freely around the work table, “Is who are you?”

“What do you mean, who am I?”

“You’re a mystery,” Cas - Qarren states.

Dean finds himself moving back to the other side of the room as Cas’ doppelganger continues.

“I can see inside your heart,” he says, going back to their little dance of following each other’s steps, “Feel the love you feel. Except -”

And Cas’ face shifts into thoughtful, almost worried confusion. “It’s cloaked in shame.”

This whole time he’s been trying to compartmentalize the fact that apparently his deepest desire is his best friend, and he almost wants to laugh at the latter’s words.

Shame? Of course he’s ashamed. He heard enough about boys who liked boys from the shotgun of the Impala as a teen, from the lips of the father who claimed to love him - Dean doesn’t doubt that he did, he did love them - but still dragged them into his distantly suicidal revenge mission.

His dad’s words of “ _it ain’t natural; it’s almost like they’re one of the monsters we hunt_ ” ring briefly in his head as he continues to sidestep his way to the further wall. It makes him feel dirty in a way that it has for the last seven years, since Castiel stepped into that barn in a shower of sparks, something he’s never been able to quite wash off.

(He’d gotten better about it, when he met Charlie. But Charlie’s dead, the image of her bloodied corpse sprawled in a bathtub added to the spinning reel of his nightmares.)

“When it comes to this,” Qarren, wearing his best friend’s face, says, touching a hand to the lapel of his trench coat, “You can’t help yourself.”

Dean keeps his gaze resigned, focusing on his face, trying to tell himself that he’s wrong.

“So why fight it?”

Dean knows why. Qarren stares at him, unblinking, so like Cas with his face and the gravel voice, but also unlike Cas, his words sounding weird on Dean’s ears.

“Just give in.”

Dean swallows, before ducking his head and turning his body away. “Yeah, y’know what, you’re right.”

Cas watches intently as Dean continues to walk.

“The real Castiel,” he says, “Does have a hold on me, but you -” He shakes his head, _but you_ , “Are nothing but a cheap imitation.”

He turns and graps the thick sheet of metal, hoisting it just quickly enough to block the coming punch. It pierces through it like paper, fist just inches from his chest. He throws it from him, and bolts but crashes into the dividing wall as the clang of the metal hitting the floor fills the room.

Qarren’s hand slams through the flimsy board. His pounding steps fills the room as he tries to vault over the table but the doppelganger is in the way. His fist makes waste of the tabletop, plunging through the surface and into the underbelly of air. Dean rolls onto the floor and jumps to yank the knife from home.

Cas’ hold on his arm hurts like a motherfucker, the knife twisting out of his grip as gunshots sound from above; he pays them no heed, his mind racing too fast as Cas shoves him up against a board. His eyes close involuntarily as Cas’ hand swings back to fist his heart out of his chest.

But the punch never lands on (or crashes through) his ribcage. Dean looks up as Qarren stumbles backwards, lets out an almighty shriek and dissipates into smoke.

His hands curl against his chest as Sam thunders down the stairs to the basement, calling out to him. His weak _“yeah!_ ” draws Sam towards him and through the tarp where Cas - where Qarren masquerading as Cas had stood only minutes ago. “So - I got it. It’s done.”

No shit, Sammy.

“We good?"

“Yeah.” He looks his brother over, finding him rumpled and a little bit dusty. His brow furrows. “You good?”

He hums an affirmative, then says, “Yeah,” before turning, tail tucked, and going back up into the salon. Sam glances around the basement, sees the hand sized hole in the wall, and then the work bench. His eyes are drawn to the knife on the floor, before he follows his brother up.

Dean is shaken - but not outwardly shaken. Sam only knows his brother is off-kilter because he _knows_ Dean.

When they get Melissa home, still tear-eyed and shaking but much better than before, they head back to the motel. The room is breeze when they enter from the smashed patio door. It seems like forever ago that Not-Dan burst in through the glass.

As Dean slips a few bills under the concrete block now sitting on a red vinyl chair, Sam, balling his shirt up to throw into his go-bag, says, “So, are you gonna keep me in suspense here, or what?”

“About what?” His head is ducked as he walks passed Sam, like he can’t quite meet his eye.

“Who was it, Mach or Simpson?” He turns back around to finished packing as Dean mutters “ _neither_.”

He glances back, makes a soft noise and goes back to packing.

“It was Cas.”

Sam freezes, slightly, then straightens up his back a little. The zip of his bag is loud in the terse silence left behind and Sam wonders for a second if he’s accidentally stumbled in one of Dean’s issues.

On second thought, he knows he just rammed right into it.

“Does that surprise you?” Sam asks, walking around his brother into the kitchen.

“That doesn’t surprise you?”

Sam puts his bag down on the table. “Honestly - ?”

“Honestly?” Dean echoes, interrupting. “What - you seriously think an angel of God is my deepest, darkest desire?”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “He isn’t?”

“No!” Dean pauses, in disbelief almost that they’re even having the conversation. “He can’t be!”

“Why not?”

Dean expression shifts to panicked for a split second before he schools it, struggling to make the words come out. “Why because if I was then that means I’m -”

“That means you’re what,” Sam asks quietly, stepping towards his brother, “Weak? Gay?”

“For starters, yeah,” Dean agrees, irritated.

Sam signs. He wants the pinch the bridge of his nose to try and curb the headache he can feel coming on, but he refrains. He sits down on the cheap motel breakfast table instead, starting, “Dean - do you honestly think you ever had a choice in the matter? He raised you from perdition. If you think I’m gonna judge you for that - I’m not.”

It’s hard to read the expression on Dean’s face; it’s concentrated, mostly, that’s all Sam can really tell of his brother. He continues as his brother moves towards him. “And I know you’ve probably beaten yourself up over it a million times! But - where’s that gotten us?”

Dean stays quiet. He finally figures out the look that Dean is wearing; its vulnerability. Dean looks like an exposed nervous feels; raw and stiff and wrestling against emotions.

He signs, and asks, “Just how bad is it?”

Dean’s jaw moves like he’s grinding his teeth together before answering, “Standing here right now?” He shakes his head. “I miss him. But when I’m in the bunker, and he’s there, just binge watching TV shows, I feel better. I know he’s okay - I can’t explain.” His throat is working and he looks like he’s trembling, and Sam _knows_ he jokes about Dean’s emotional constipation, but in this moment, he’s never seen his brother more wrecked outside a life or death situation.

“But to call it desire or love, it’s not that.”

Sam almost wants to cry now, because all the things Dean’s finally just said and now he’s trying to erase them - it’s what he does, because Dean would much rather deal with other people’s problems than his own.

“Are you sure?” Tentative, gentle, Sam asks the question like he asks distraught members of family on a case. Treading the thin line of insensitivity and emotional-dam breaking.

Dean ducks his head, tucks his chin against his chest. His voice is quiet when he mumbles, “No.” He looks up a little more and adds, clearer and louder, “I’m screwed, man.”

“It’s okay, Dean.”

Dean looks away, nods while blinking heavily and makes his way out of the motel room, leaving Sam with just the tacky furnishings. He closes his eyes and lets out a deep breath as he hears the Impala door open and shut from outside the single panel window behind him. He scrubs a hand over his jaw, and tries to think about anything other than his brother’s issues for a minute.

He fails.


End file.
